To Know the Truth
by Ash M. Knight
Summary: How the great Batman and the notorious Joker really interact. A retelling. Story is better than my crappy summary. Batman/Joker Slash.
1. Vibrations Between Them

Though the scene would have done well with the addition, no wind whistled through the windows of the room to create an eerie feel. There were no windows. The only noises heard were Batman's heavy breathing and the steady beating of the Joker's heart; Did he have one after all? The two of them, together, alone and confined. At last. At long, long last.

"Where is Dent?"

The voice was deep and shockingly masculine. Even the still, lifeless, un-breathing cement walls seemed to vibrate, shaking in fear. The man leaning up against them, however, wasn't shaking in the slightest. He sat as firm as a flag pole, his back confidently resting against the support behind it. Behind midnight pits of black, two green eyes watched the bulkier figure fret himself about the room. "You have all these rules," he drawled, "and you think they'll save you." For a joker, the seriousness in his eyes was nearly enough to have a lion shaking on his own territory; And yet, for all that, they still seemed to flicker with a bright, glowing green flame of playfulness. The cat had found its ball of yarn.

The dark knight watched the painted face with caution. What was he thinking? "I have one rule," he told the Joker, their eyes locking for the very first time. Vibrations in the air shot between them, shaking each of their hearts. Neither was afraid, but they both felt it none the less.

The spell was only broken when the Joker finally shut his eyes in one swift, clearing blink. His voice broke the silence. "Then that's the rule you'll have to break to know the truth," he said, his voice taunting and even more playful than his eyes.

The bat was less amused. Far more serious. Beads of sweat like tiny bombs gathered on his upper lip. "Which is?" he hissed in response.

Though the bat man was closer than ever and looming over the sitting figure, threateningly looking as if he might be prepared to smash the Joker's face in, the Joker was unshakable. His taunting voice slithered through he airwaves once more, and this time, Batman responded. "The only sensible way to live in this world is without rules. And tonight you're gonna break your one rule." Though the Joker couldn't see it through the thick, yet flexible black suit, goosebumps were raising themselves on the man's arm.

His tongue passing gracefully - like that of a wealthy man of leisure who was under great pressure and stress - over his bottom lip, Batman replied, a little more shakily than he had intended, "I'm considering it."

This was not enough to satisfy the Joker, and he made that quite clear with his own reply. "No, there's only minutes left, so you're gonna have to play my little game if you want to save one of them." Still, none of him looked shaken, stirred, or bothered in the slightest. Did the man feel stress? Could he even feel at all? Batman wasn't sure. For some reason, this one was harder to read. What was so different about him? It made him uneasy. The Joker, however, was enjoying the reaction as well as the man's insecurity.

After a moment of hesitation - one that was too long to really be safe - he reached over and pulled down the shade covering the window. Faces disappeared, and he was left alone with the Joker. When the faces were covered, lost completely from Batman's mind, he almost felt more relaxed. After all, he had control then. He must have. They were alone, and if anything should happen... well... who could prove it, if nobody saw? "Tell me what you want, Joker," Batman said, his voice quivering ever so slightly, but enough for his opponent to notice; And they were opponents, for they were, indeed, playing a game - one the bat man could hardly tell if he was winning or losing.

With a sick, bitter laugh, the Joker finally raised is eyes to meet Batman's once again. This time, his look was not playful. It was serious. "Turn the light off, Mr. Wayne," the hush voice instructed. "I want to play fair."

The hesitation here was not as long as it should have been. Really, Batman should not have been complying with the whims of an enemy. Right? But right and wrong, in a good story, are usually irrelevant. In this case here, right and wrong have very little to do with the story at all. The only moral conflict of any significance was the internal mayhem passing through the mind of Gotham's great hero. As his shaking hand finally did pull the chain to the dangling, swinging light source, he could feel his stomach heave, as if it was rebelling against Batman's own act against his conscience. When all was dark, the calm voice of the Joker slid into his ears like the smoothest of silks, in whispering tones, "Sit beside me, Batman. I'm not going to kill you." Finally, a laugh broke through his voice. This one, however, was soft, almost sad. "I don't want to kill you! What would I do without you? Go back to ripping off mob dealers? No, no, you... you complete me..."

Bruce Wayne, Gotham's young, rich hero, felt is heart stop. As he sat down, his suit hissing softly as it slid against the concrete wall - for his will to rebel had disappeared with the light - he couldn't help but find himself looking hard through the darkness for some sort of light glowing from the Joker's eyes. But they remained hidden from him, as open as they were and as glowing as they seemed in the daylight. "H-How did you know? Why... I thought... It's not possible," the hero stammered. His protest was a weak one, for as soon as words began to slip fast his own lips, he felt a hand on his own thigh.

"Oh, no, no, no," the villain cackled, pressing his hand ever harder and closer to Batman. "It's entirely possible. Now... you like rules. So now you're going to play by mine. You do want to save them, don't you, Batman?"

Another hesitation. This one was fatal.

"Decide," the Joker demanded upon the silence. "Decide now."

"Yes, yes. Tell me what you want, damn you!"

With another vicious, deranged cackle, the Joker made the last sound any of the cops just outside the door heard the sound of their hero being slammed to the floor with a thud. All other noise was far too soft be detected by their ears. Batman and Joker alone knew what passed between them: words, touches, and all.


	2. Shattered Glass

Days later, the two were alone again. This time, the wind was whistling. Loud enough, in fact, to give Batman shivers - even though his suit. High up above Gotham where no one else could see them, the Joker had his plaything in his final clutches. Hanging over the edge of the broken window, Batman struggled to get free, his hands weakly shoving up against the man's shoulders. Was he even a man? No, Bruce told himself, he couldn't be; he's far too crazy. Perhaps Bruce was correct in thinking that the Joker was something sub-human, but even still, he could not keep himself from being pulled in. "I thought you said you wouldn't kill me!" he exclaimed, gasping for breath.

The metal bar being pressed against his chest was all that was separating their bodies. Every other inch of them was locked neatly, perfectly, into the other. Though the joker was pressing hard and holding down his playmate, the rest of his body was not being brutal. It was only Batman's weakened will that was preventing him from rolling away altogether - and the fact that rolling would have been dangerous, seeing as he was nearly hanging off a building and laying on top of thousands of shards of broken glass. The sounds of glass shattering when the window broke had shocked them both, and it had caused their eyes to lock as well. Bruce's soft brown eyes touched the Joker's green ones, and fire quickly spread between the two of them.

In response to the hero's comment, the Joker's face softened out of a grimace and into a look that seemed almost pained. "I wouldn't..." he admitted. It was a slow confession. How was he to explain, without looking weak? A new class of criminal? Ha. How was he supposed to accomplish that when he was so busy playing with his newest toy? All he could seem to focus on was Batman. Sure, the set-up of Harvey and Rachel had been one designed to stir the town into a frenzy and perhaps destroy Gotham's best chance for purity, but really... it had been about Batman. Why else would he have thrown Rachel into the mix? It wasn't all about the chaos, and that fact gnawed down to his very core. He was a disappointment. A let down. He, just like every other criminal in Gotham, had been swallowed whole by the bat man.

Regaining his composure and tucking his pain away for a later date, he stared down into the eyes of his adversary with his signature playful grin. It was showtime once again. "Oh, Batman. Don't be silly. I wouldn't kill you. You..." But he was cut off by his impatient victim, who was all too ready to lash out from frustration. And how could he not be frustrated? The man truly did seem to be insane to the deepest degree.

"No," Batman spat - literally, up into the Joker's paint-covered face - and glared up at the figure. "You're crazy. WHY are you even doing this? What are you getting out of it? You said you wanted chaos, but you're not working towards it. You're busy here, playing with me. What do you really want, Joker? You wanted me to play your game. I played, didn't I? I did what you wanted..." His face twisted into a grimace, as if his stomach was threatening to turn up whatever dinner he'd eaten that night. "Didn't I? I don't understand... How can I make you stop?" His pleas were almost desperate.

The Joker thought hard about this, as if he'd never even considered it himself. As a number of things flashed through his mind, the muscles throughout his body tensed, and the man beneath him could feel it. This caused a looked of concern mixed with confusion to plague his features. Batman cared, or at least that was how it would seem. The Joker, though obviously startled by the pressing questions, at last had formulated something similar to an answer. "I want... I want..." Upon realizing that his answer wasn't formulated fully, after all, flicked his tongue across his lips a few times and pressed a hand through his greasy hair. His hair seemed to be glowing green from the light of the copters outside.

At last, the words came. "I want to feel at home somewhere. Not even Gotham seems to have a place for me without you." This confession, too, was slow, but less so. His eyes fell away from the man underneath him and rested on the broken window. Soon, they would run out of time to be alone together. "You don't fit in here, either, Bruce," he finally said, looking back into his eyes. "No one here loves you. They all want you to turn yourself in. To give yourself up! To take off your mask..." He paused here, glancing over the item with curious intensity. "To take off your mask, and reveal yourself. They want you thrown to the dogs. A scrap of meat. A sacrifice to keep the devil at bay. But it won't work, Bruce. Gotham will tear itself apart, hating you, until you hang up the costume and become Bruce Wayne, the former Batman." Again, he paused. He wanted the words to sting. "They think they don't need you. But they'll find out, when you're behind bars and their city is in ruins, that you were the only thing holding Gotham together."

His grip on the bar and his pressure on the hero's chest had lightened a good deal, but Bruce - Batman... or was he Bruce still? - lay still, pinned not by the Joker's hands, but is piecing gaze. "That's not true. They do need me. You're just blinding them all to the truth. They're scared. Clearly, they should be."

"Oh, don't say that. Don't say that." Looking displeased, the Joker's tongue flicked out across his lips once more, as if he had eaten something bitter. "They should be scared of me, but I'm not really so frightening. Come on. Just look at me. Look at me!" Without so much as a menacing cackle, he grabbed Batman's jaw and turned his head to face his own. "Now, isn't that just the most innocent, sweet little face you've ever seen? Hmm?"

Batman thought for a moment, then nodded, moving the Joker's hand with his head as he did so. As he gazed up into the face of the man who had seemingly gone so insane that he wanted to take over Gotham, images of what the man had been like in his childhood flashed before his very eyes. They played over and over again in his mind, until, finally, he spoke. "You're not so tough. You don't even enjoy pain. You enjoy watching people squirm..." Feeling the man on top of him lean in and press his body ever closer - every part of his body - he fought hard for each breath as he kept speaking. "That's not so cynical, really."

Just as the Joker opened his mouth - he was looking rather shocked with it hanging open that way - to respond, Batman jerked his head around, seeing the search lights focus in on their window. "End it, Batman. Go on. End it now. I want you to. End it! I dare you! Throw me over the edge." At first, Batman reached up and gripped the man's shoulders tightly, as if he might have actually completed the action. Then, the horror of the moment - the realization - flashed across his brown eyes.

"No. I won't. I won't be corrupted by you," Batman protested, loosening his grip but leaving his hands on the Joker's shoulders and the scowl on his face. Still, he didn't sound as sure as he was trying to. "Get me out of here. And make it look good. You can play with me all you want if it will get you to leave Gotham alone." Though it should have sounded like some brave hero's sacrifice for his beloved city, it did not. It sounded more like a request, and the Joker was more than willing to comply. To the search lights, it probably appeared as if the Joker was dragging away a defeated victim. To the two of them, it was a play - a staged act for the public. What really went on between the two would remain a secret, only to be known to them, for the rest of their days.


	3. The Serpent

Pressure and sparks blended into one messy blur. Every nerve in his body echoed the Joker's appearance: frazzled, shaken, messy. In a few short moments, Bruce found his lungs screaming for air. They received no relief, no quenching drink to ease the pain. How was it possible, he wondered, to feel more suffocated in the open Gotham air than back behind the stage of an old theater? For each breath drawn, his lungs compressed and forced the air back out into the wind. The result of this was a noise which he could not stop himself from releasing.

The Joker's mind shuffled cluttered thoughts about on bullet trains, but never steadily enough to pass his lips. His body was focused, though his mind was weak. Wind, again, assaulted Batman's body, as if holding large ice cubes hard against each inch of him, and though Gotham's swift skyline breeze was something he had long ago grown used to, there was something about it that was different. This time, he was left virgin and vulnerable, free for the taking. As gentle as the breeze may have been, comparatively, it was ripping its nails across his skin like thousands of small, silver tacks.

The walls of Gotham's soldier fell, not slowly like consuming fire, but quickly like a breaking dam. His moral spine had snapped, and in that frozen moment, he was paralyzed beneath a man of lesser conscience than any he'd known in all his years. The flame of a burning, dripping hand brushed skin and set the ready pyre to burn. The wave of heat crashed down upon him; the breaking waves beat his aching frame back into the concrete. A desperate plea, a groan, a curse, slid past his heart and through his lips, a rogue serpent from the Garden of Eden.

"Now, there's a bat man," a voice cackled. It was one of triumph and victory. It glowed with pride and shook with passion, just the way it should when a man gets what he really wants. When a man achieves his ultimate goal, it is a moment that rocks him to the core with breathless wonder. The bat man, however, was the only one who found himself unable to breathe. Though the moonlight glowed down upon pale, sweaty flesh, it could not pierce the skin the way the Joker's eyes seemed to. Every glance sent a pulse through the boy's body, and it was he that was shook to the core with breathless wonder. The tables had been roughly turned, and like a mirror, the Joker's every jolt of feeling was cast down upon his victim.

And Bruce lay there to suffer. The predator took pride in his catch, savoring every drop of fluid that covered the body of his prey. Even the drops he know could have easily been his own. By then, though, every molecule, every particle of human life between them was spread equally about their bodies. It was a passion so intense that fluids began to blend and blur just as flesh meshed together into one dripping unit.

Though the Joker had certainly had his fill of the muscular torso before him, as evident by stripes of rubies scarring milky moonlight skin, his hands fumbled down and passed further into uncharted territory. Pushing back the surprisingly soft cloak of darkness separating their bodies, the Joker's fingertips pressed roughly past the hero's naval. As if pulled by a string tied 'round the villain's finger, another unspeakable noise was torn past the opposing lips. And this time, the masculine voice of our hero crackled like fire and slipped up into the ever-listening ears of the Joker.

"One more time, Batty. Come on. Just...once?"

The final boards of resistance were cracked like dead and hollow oak trees as the hero's own fingertips found flesh to grip. In his moment of hesitation, his fingers seemed to linger, wondering if they were supposed to be pulling the opposing force closer or pushing it father away. His head was screaming no, but his lips were screaming something different. Load, cowardly gasps and shudders wracked his body as his hands groped for something warm. At first, they found no area of comfort. After much persistence, though it happened in what must have been only half a moment, his quaking hands found a place of peace.

They pressed in hard, nails included, into the small of the villain's back. It was not an attack, but an attempt at closeness. The bat could no longer deny what his body would not do without. As the body of the man before him, equally shirtless and sweaty, slid in and locked hips with his own, Batman's face grew pale. The warrior had no more fight left in him, not enough enough to hold his heavy lids open, and so his eyes rolled back and slammed themselves shut. The doors of his heart had been barred shut to moral arguments. Only his body was speaking now.

The Joker took no time in closing whatever gap was left between their bodies as one more groan, this one of pleasure, escaped his plaything's lips. Their frames fit close like puzzles pieces, and soon, on his hands separated their bodies. When Batman finally dared to open his eyes again, he saw not in his former black and white, but also in a vivid shade of green. Though sparks and fireworks erupted in his gut, the only audible sounds were ones of heavy, desperate breathing, and that time, he was not alone.

The hero's heart, corrupted and black from the stain of lust, ached hard and jarred itself incessantly against his ribcage. The Joker, his own heart responding in the like, felt every beat of the organ and heard scream of his hero's body, even if the young man had managed to silence all but his muffled whimpers. Just as the bat man felt he might literally fall crashing through the roof of the building for weight of passion, he found one last burst of will. Though beaten and broken, the bat was not dead, and in the moments before his final groans into the ear of his worthy partner, his

lips found the flesh of the Joker's neck.

The fallen angel had succumbed completely to the serpents will.

The bite marks, though faint and quickly fading, would never let the Joker forget it.


	4. Conquered At Last

When streams of blood and sweat run together into one violent, passionate body of water, the river seems to boil. It was so with Batman and his joker.

At last, he had conquered his worst fear: chaos. He had taken it, claimed it, and made it his own. Though fear may have been clawing at his insides, trying to destroy any corruptible part of him like a white blood cell attacks and destroys a virus, he kept his resolve. His conscience, however, had been swept up in the river and carried off somewhere downstream. The moment the man heard his own name, he know that the dam he had built to keep corruption at bay had cracked, shattered, and crumbled at the feet of his opponent.

Perhaps if he had been prepared, he could have handled the break in small doses. However, this was not the case, and when the rush came, it overtook him completely. In conquering his fear, he had, in turn, been conquered. Chaos rushed in and crashed down upon his shoulders; He could feel the weight of it pressing him close to the one thing that repulsed him the most.

"Bruce...Brucie..."

His eyes had been fixed, focused, ready. Now he was just seeing spots. They bubbled before him, adding more to his confusion. What was in his head and what was real? He found himself asking that question far more often than not. When his gentle brown eyes - ones that seemed to contradict his superhero identity - locked onto the source of the noise, the rest of him blurred out of focus. He felt his knees go weak, and then contract suddenly in one quick, tense moment. All of this took place in the split second before the joker's next utterance.

"...I love you..."

The Joker hadn't missed a beat, but Batman had. As if he wasn't falling through layers of self consciousness already, his stomach decided to lurch forward, bringing the rest of him along. Their bodies were even closer, and when skin pressed against skin, Batman's heart skipped a beat. At first, he was silent, simply absorbing as his own dirt-smudged fingernails dug into the flesh of the joker's upper shoulder blades.

When his mind finally regained consciousness - for it had shut itself off moments before, upon hearing its own name - Bruce slid himself up a little further and tucked himself neatly between the villain's thighs. With every breath either took, the bare skin of their torsos touched and Bruce could feel their hips pressing together - not hard enough to hurt, but hard enough to feel.


End file.
